Statistics on violence against Women in the States!!!
Rafida Ahmed Bonna
[1]
Here is some data on violence against woman in the USA (copied from National Organization of Women website; www.now.org) . They might want to work on a massive house cleaning before Uncle Sam and Co. open their mouth about the rest of the world on this issue:
MURDER. Every day four women die in this country as a result of domestic violence, the euphemism for murders and assaults by husbands and boyfriends. That's approximately 1,400 women a year, according to the FBI. The number of women who have been murdered by their intimate partners is greater than the number of soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.
BATTERING. Although only 572,000 reports of assault by intimates are officially reported to federal officials each year, the most conservative estimates indicate two to four million women of all races and classes are battered each year. At least 170,000 of those violent incidents are serious enough to require hospitalization, emergency room care or a doctor's attention. SEXUAL ASSAULT . Every year approximately 132,000 women report that they have been victims of rape or attempted rape, and more than half of them knew their attackers. It's estimated that two to six times that many women are raped, but do not report it. Every year 1.2 million women are forcibly raped by their current or former male partners, some more than once.
THE TARGETS. Women are 10 times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate. Young women, women who are separated, divorced or single, low- income women and African-American women are disproportionately victims of assault and rape. Domestic violence rates are five times higher among families below poverty levels, and severe spouse abuse is twice as likely to be committed by unemployed men as by those working full time. Violent attacks on lesbians and gay men have become two to three times more common than they were prior to 1988.IMPACT ON CHILDREN. Violent juvenile offenders are four times more likely to have grown up in homes where they saw violence. Children who have witnessed violence at home are also five times more likely to commit or suffer violence when they become adults.
IMPACT ON HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES. Women who are battered have more than twice the health care needs and costs than those who are never battered. Approximately 17 percent of pregnant women report having been battered, and the results include miscarriages, stillbirths and a two to four times greater likelihood of bearing a low birth weight baby. Abused women are disproportionately represented among the homeless and suicide victims. Victims of domestic violence are being denied insurance in some states because they are considered to have a "pre-existing condition."
SOURCES:
"Violence Against Women: A National Crime
Victimization Survey Report", U.S. Department of
Justice, Washington, D.C., January 1994.
"The National Women's Study," Crime Victims Research
and Treatment Center, Medical University of South
Carolina, Charleston, SC, 1992.
"Five Issues In American Health," American Medical
Association, Chicago, 1991.
Bullock, Linda F. and Judith McFarlane, "The Birth
Weight/Battering Connection," Journal of American
Nursing, September 1989.
McFarlane, Judith, et. al., "Assessing for Abuse
During Pregnancy," Journal of the American Medical
Association, June 17, 1992.
Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics, 1992.
Sheehan, Myra A. "An Interstate Compact on Domestic
Violence: What are the Advantages?" Juvenile and
Family Justice Today, 1993.
Sherman, Lawrence W. et al. Domestic Violence:
Experiments and Dilemmas, 1990.
A study of five cities -- New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Boston and Minneapolis -- by the National
Gay and Lesbian Task Force, published in 1992.
Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/5208
========================================================Re: Statistics on violence against Women in the States!!!
Sherry Holmes
[2]
Rafida Ahmed Bonna,
I am an American woman and you are right about the statistics on violence against women in America. When I was a firefighter, we once had a woman pull into the station who had been beaten very badly. She had several broken ribs, a broken arm, a cracked skull, and her whole face was so swollen that she could only see out of a slit in one of her eyes. She had somehow in that state managed to put both of her small children into a child seat in the back of her car and drive to the station for help. Her kids were very quiet. There was a little girl and a little boy. Both had lung infections and were pretty sick. The police came and the man was arrested and charged and put in jail, but only because she pressed charges. If the woman won't press charges then the police can do nothing. The woman had probably been beaten less severely many times and gone back to him and not pressed charges. That is the so called "Pattern of Domestic Violence" He beats the crap out of her, then says he is sorry and won't do it again and buys her flowers or something so she won't leave him and press charges. Then he beats her up again....and again.... and it continues until she leaves or he kills her. Almost every City in the country has a place (or several) called a battered women's shelter. When people get rid of old clothes or furniture or appliances they can either give them to the salvation army or to the women's shelter. The location of these places is kept secret. Women who want out of an abusive relationship can call a free number and go there and people will help them get a new start. Even with the shelters, most women have to let things get pretty bad before their friends can convince them leave and go to a shelter.
In this country, most rapes are not reported. The reason is that many times, no one believes the victim. The guy will say that she consented and she will say she didn't. At that point, the entire trial turns to the purpose of making the woman look like a slut so the jury won't believe it was rape. No woman wants to go through that. It must be said that there are many cases when a woman has said a man raped her when he didn't.
There are many types of women in this country. There are intelligent educated women and helpless women, firefighters and beauticians, manipulative women and honest women, murderers and rapists (yes, women have been known to sexually assault other women and sometimes men, though it is rare, or at least rarely reported). There are women who are police and women who are criminals. There are women who are drug addicts and women who are doctors. There are prostitutes and nuns. There isn't much in this country that women haven't done, both good and bad. This country has much violence and much that is wrong with it. There are many grass roots community efforts to try to fix what is wrong in America. I think the thing that I like about America is this...if a man comes in my home and shoots me, it will be on the news and the police will do an investigation and try very hard to catch whoever did it. If my husband beats me, I can go to a womens shelter and I can call the police and have him arrested. If someone rapes me, I can call the police and have him arrested. I don't like the idea of the trial I would go through, but I can't think of a better way. You can't just go convicting people just because someone said so. Men who go to jail for rape and for domestic abuse are not treated very kindly by other inmates while they are in prison. Many are raped and abused themselves. I would not want an innocent man to go through that.
America is far from perfect, but we Americans are not just standing idly by and watching all of this happen. I think that if you try not to judge America by it's government, but instead by it's citizens, you will see that we are indeed as you said, very much like other countries and that our people run the gamut from very bad to very good, from selfish to humanitarian, from rich to poor, from fundamentalist to rationalist, from uneducated to PhD, and from Black to white and every race in-between.
Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/5269